“Song”
“Song” is an essential term on the play. It is a metaphor for self-identity. To sing one’s song is to live a life as one defines it rather than singing another person’s song which is identity as applied by someone else.
“Shiny Man”
The “Shiny man” is another metaphorical element which contributes to the establishment of self-identity. The “Shiny man” is the person who affirms one’s self-identity as the right choice for the chosen course of one’s path through life.
“My legs won’t stand up.”
In one particularly metaphor-laden scene, Loomis is talking to Bynum in a kind of symbolic code about the “wind’s blowing the breath into his body” which causes the “ground’s staring to shake” and “the sky’s splitting open.” This imagery all contributes to the scene becoming a moment of transformation for Loomis is overcome with a sense of empowerment and determination to finally throw off the shackles which his seven years of bondage under Joe Turner still keep him imprisoned within. Determination is not enough, however, because all those years of being shackled have led to entropy and weakness in his physical being which here is transformed into the metaphorical imagery of the spirit being willing but the flesh remaining weakened.
Women
The older and more experienced Bynum tries to teach the impulsive young Jeremy a lesson in appreciating women with a short monologue that becomes a long, extended metaphor comparing women to distant land seen from a ship. Jeremy just sees the land as a line on the horizon, but Bynum tries to show him that the wise man sees the land in all its contours and detail.
“Water and berries”
Bynum’s monologue to Jeremy occurs in Act I, scene 4. At the end of Act II, scene 1, Jeremy reveals he was paying attention and he did learn from the metaphor of the ship looking out over the horizon. After a brief flirtation with Mattie Campbell, Jeremy asks Molly Cunningham to go away with him by repeating almost word for word one of the images he recalls from Bynum’s monologue:
“With a woman like you it’s like having water and berries. A man got everything he need.”
